Archive for March 25th, 2015

On Thursday 5th March we had a change to our normal meeting at Wetherby by taking advantage of the Education Training Workshop. After our area meeting Area President Peter Wilson announced that as Clubs, Areas or Regions we could have workshops presented by Immediate Past National President Lindsay Dutch in the south and Graham McLachlan in the North. As a proactive club we jumped at the chance to be able to have personal and club development training.

We decided that it would be good to have a workshop on Evaluation and Judging presented by Lindsay Dutch. We invited other clubs in our region to join us so that we could all share in the training.

Lindsay started the session with enthusiasm and energy, he found out about what we wanted to learn and what our challenges were when we carried out evaluations. We were able to discuss problems and issues that each of us had or experienced in the club and all agreed on best ways to enhance our evaluation skills and by this improve our speeches. Many of us had not judged before and the training gave us guidance and confidence not to be intimidated with the process and hopefully we will be able to put the training into practice next year.

It’s great that the ASC have listened to its members and made this training available to us all, there are a vast number of topics that can be chosen from that will enhance your club and you. The main point I will take away from the night is to read and keep reading the Speakers Guide; it is there to help us and we don’t make enough of its advice and resources or at least I don’t.

The training we received will encourage our club and remind us all on how to be better evaluators. The training has reinforced that when we follow the guidelines and put them into practice, together with the tips and skills Lindsay has shared with us, we will be looking forward to a stronger club. It was impressive at our District competition to see one of the attendees put the training to use and to see the improvements in practice as this enhanced the evaluation.

I would recommend all clubs to tap in to the free resource as soon as possible